What Trump and Hillary Spent vs Every General Election Candidate Since 1960

With just one day remaining in the 2016 election cycle, it’s now possible to tally up the last two years of campaign spending reports and get a near-final look at what the Clinton and Trump campaigns have spent. The chart below shows their totals, in comparison to presidential candidates from past elections.

The super PAC spending numbers shown here include only single-candidate super PACs, those that explicitly support a specific candidate. Not included are spending by unaffiliated super PACs and other independent expenditures for or against the general election candidates (often on behalf of a primary election opponent from the same party).

In early 2015, this election had all the makings of a record shattering spending race. The field included Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Hillary Clinton and a host of other candidates with a proven track record of fundraising. Fresh off the 2012 Citizens United decision, the prospect of unlimited spending by super PACs loomed large (the Koch brothers alone intended to spend nearly $900 million in the 2016 campaign). And the historical trend was pointing in one direction. In each of the last four presidential elections, the two general election candidates spent significantly more than in the election before.

Surprisingly (or maybe not surprising at all considering both candidates’ record-low approval ratings), Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have spent substantially less than Obama and Romney did in 2012.

Historical spending, normalized to 2016

To make the comparison to prior years apples-to-apples, it’s not enough to account for inflation only. Not only has the value of a dollar changed over time, but the population has grown (more potential donors) and so has the average household income (more money to donate).

When you adjust for all three factors — inflation, population growth and income growth — here is how the numbers shake out (exact calculation described further down).

By this measure, spending in this election was a big drop-off from the recent upward trend. But in historical terms, 2016 looks pretty average.

It will be interesting to look back a few elections from now and see how 2016 looks in hindsight. Will 2016 turn out to be a blip in an otherwise ever-increasing trend of campaign spending? Or were 2008 and 2012 the aberration, and is 2016 just a return to long-term normality?

Another obvious takeaway is the connection between the amount of money spent and who wins the election. Not since Ford lost to Carter in 1976 has the candidate who spent the most money lost. If past trends are indicative of future performance, Clinton would have the edge. So far in this election, past trends have meant very little. We’ll see very soon whether this one holds up.

To normalize the spending numbers to 2016, I adjusted for inflation (GDP deflator), population growth, and income growth (real GDP per capita). When you multiply them together, the result is just nominal GDP. So formula I used is:

I'm an NYC-based entrepreneur (my newest project: Blueshift) and adjunct instructor at UPenn. I'm fascinated by data visualization and the ways that data is transforming our understanding of the world. I spend a lot of time with my face buried in Excel, and when I find something interesting I write about it here and also as a Guardian Cities and Huffington Post contributor.More about my background

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Looks like Trump ran of one the most efficient campaigns ever, becoming the winning candidate who overcame the largest campaign spending deficit… Would be interesting to see the spending difference between the two candidates for each campaign, in absolute and relative terms…

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Yes. An interesting comparison is he and Goldwater. They were both Republican renegades, disliked by their own parties. Goldwater managed to raise a lot of money but was smashed in the election. Trump was the opposite — couldn’t raise much money, but managed to win. I’m skeptical about how good a president he will make, but I have to give him credit for pulling off the victory.
Maybe I will add a chart showing what each candidate spent per vote.

Randy Ruminate

plus he is a racist, All Hail Trump!

Aleks

In constant dollars, would be great. And how much each candidate spent per vote as a percentage of the amount spent per vote for both candidates.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

They are constant dollars

FelixZD

Max, I see only a blue-side trend toward more spending of late (looking at the normalized chart). Romney ’12, when compared to Obama ’12, looks to be like the pull-up on McGovern ’72 in response to the anomalous Nixon ’72.

What’s interesting is how one might put a value on media support by recalibrating the numbers. Observe the Goldwater/Nixon numbers and election results. Keep in mind Goldwater and Nixon were not exactly media darlings. So, apparently, this chart gives us a feel for how much more you had to spend than the other guy to run against the media’s choice back in the day.

Of course, the media world was a lot different back in Goldwater/Nixon days. Today, Trump apparently had the *advantage* of the media being 99% against him. 🙂

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

No doubt media is a huge factor not accounted for here. Those two guys had a negative public image to overcome, as did Hillary,. But Obama was the opposite, very positive media attention and big fundraising. Wonder if there is some connection.

Another factor not fully accounted for here is super PAC money. Trump-dedicated super PACs didn’t raise very much, but as a whole GOP super PACs (unaffiliated or for other GOP candidates) raised way more than Democrat super PACs. The same was true in 2012.

For example it says Hillary raised 969.1 million on that link not including super pacs.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Campaign finance is so crazy.
The biggest difference is the numbers here are do not include the money spent by the RNC / DNC, not all of which goes toward the presidential race. Also I only included Super PACs that explicitly supported one of the candidates. But as explained below the chart, it’s ambiguous and there are other ways the super PACs could be counted. Would need to look closer to see if there is anything else.

Daniel Mosco

I hear you. It is just odd they all claim the data is from the FEC. The Bloomberg link does show the unspent donations. However there is a pretty big disparity.

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